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Artificial general intelligence (AGI) — in other words, systems that could successfully perform any intellectual task that a human can. Not in my lifetime, not
by ianceicys 4y ago
Artificial general intelligence (AGI) — in other words, systems that could successfully perform any intellectual task that a human can.
Not in my lifetime, not in this millennium. Possibly in the year 2,300.
Weird way to blow $20 million.
- diputsmonro 4y agoA society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they never expect to sit in. Not everything requires an immediate profit incentive to be a good idea.
- tengbretson 4y agoA society does not grow great when an old man collects $20 million dollars for the fruit of a tree that he has no capability of planting in the first place.
- icelancer 4y agoSo sure are you that Carmack can't make inroads here, I wonder where you get the confidence from?
- makeee 4y agoDoesn't imply any task, just a wide variety of tasks. 10 years at most.
- ianceicys 4y agoThen it's NOT generalized. ANY means ANY.
- dymk 4y agoCan you do any task asked of you, which could be asked of a human being? ANY task.
- ianceicys 4y agoI may not be able to ANY task sufficiently well (ex Calculus, Poetry, Emotion), but by the very definition of being a Human I can do *any* Human task.
- dymk 4y agoWith specific training, sure. Why are we holding an AI to a higher standard?
- kmnc 4y agoIf the task is possible… then why not?
- dymk 4y agoWhat if you don't know how to complete the task?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- arkitaip 4y agoBy definition it has to be any task otherwise it wouldn't be general. What tasks wouldn't an AGI be able to perform and still be an AGI?
- dymk 4y agoReliably trick a humans into thinking it's a human. That's it.
- mod 4y agoI believe that's the Turing Test, not necessarily a definition (or requirement) for AGI.
- dymk 4y agoWhere’s AGI defined? I’ve only seen it used in the context of “can pass the Turing test”
- dinosaurdynasty 4y agoAGI isn't really explicitly defined (it wouldn't be a problem if it was) but it's essentially an artificial version of the "general" intelligence that humans have, aka we can do and learn many things we were not programmed or trained by evolution to do
- nomel 4y agoIt sounds like you may be demanding more from AGI that we do of humans. AGI is a mushy concept, not a hard requirement. "Any task" is definitely not required for a low functioning AGI, just as it's not a requirement for a low functioning human, who still easily fits the definition of an intelligent being.
- yeellow 4y agoFor each human being having GI there are many tasks that person won't be able to perform. For example proving math theorems, doing research in physics, writing a poem, etc. Specyfic AGI could have its limitations as well.
- jtwaleson 4y agoMy takeaway from the Lex Fridman interview is of someone that’s machine-like in his approach. AGI suddenly seemed simpler and within reach. Skipping consciousness and qualia. It’s inhumane, but machine-like and effective. Curious what will become of it.
- bsenftner 4y agoI believe AGI is the threshold where generalized artificial comprehension is achieved and the model can understand any task. Once the understanding part is composable the building portion is following the understanding. I'm using understanding rather than model because our models we make today are not these kinds of comprehensions, understandings are more intelligent.
- freediver 4y agoYou are probably right, but if anyone can make a dent Carmak is the person.
- vlunkr 4y agoDo game dev skills transfer to AGI? I know he's a smart guy, but I don't think that's a given.
- zaptrem 4y agoHe's not just a game dev, he is one of the most legendary graphics programmers (and just programmers) alive. Similar to how GPUs transferred well from gaming to ML, it seems like much of the math and parallel/efficiency-focused thinking of graphics programing is useful in ML.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- 5d8767c68926 4y agoIf he succeeds, his skillet becomes the Platonic ideal of an AGI developer.
- mda 4y agoskillet? well I for one welcome our new kitchen utensil overlords.
- gizajob 4y agoWorked for Demis Hassabis
- sowbug 4y agoRead Michael Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book for the story of how the original Quake came to life. You'll get an appreciation for John Carmack's ability to thoroughly research widely varying solutions to a problem, quickly create production-quality implementations of the promising ones, and even more quickly abandon the dead ends. The result is this almost boring, seemingly linear progression toward a final product that seems obvious in hindsight, yet it represents a leap forward the way Quake did in the mid-1990s compared to other FPSes at the time. I don't know of other public stories of individual engineers who can span both the very cutting edge of research and the practicalities of shipping real commercial software. https://github.com/jagregory/abrash-black-book https://github.com/jagregory/abrash-black-book
- gfodor 4y agoYou have some catching up to do. Consensus is dropping to this lifetime for sure, if not this decade.
- efficax 4y agowhat consensus? i think most researchers remain skeptical
- bpodgursky 4y agoUh... no. Most researchers have moved their timelines to somewhere between 2030 and 2040. You can argue they're wrong, but there is absolutely a general consensus that AGI is going to be this generation.
- xen2xen1 4y agoAnd consensus is never wrong!
- SketchySeaBeast 4y agoEspecially assertions of consensus provided without evidence of said consensus.
- gfodor 4y agoI don’t know that the consensus is right but the OP’s confidence of it being far off made me think they were unaware of the recent shifts (not just in consensus, but the upstream capabilities.)
- gizajob 4y agoAGI has been 20-30 years away for some 70 years now...
- Isinlor 4y ago
- ZephyrBlu 4y agoIf I'm remembering right, Carmack believes AGI will be a thing by 2030. He said this in his recent interview with Lex Fridman.
- nomel 4y agoFrom what I remember, his definition of AGI didn't include an average IQ, which it shouldn't.
- fancy_pantser 4y agoIt's a long interview, here's just the bit focused on AGI: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLi83prR5fg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLi83prR5fg
- mupuff1234 4y agoBut I think something of the level of a 6 year old, not so much a super being.
- willio58 4y agoIt’s not blowing 20 million if it results in meaningful progress in this area. We have something like 2700 billionaires on this planet. This isn’t even a drop in the bucket for someone like that interested in furthering this research. AGI could quite literally shift any job to automation. This is human-experience changing stuff.
- blibble 4y ago> This is human-experience changing stuff. that's one way of putting it it will remove the need for the vast majority of the population, which will end extremely badly
- gizajob 4y agoBut by the same token, there's no need for billions of humans now. AGI isn't really going to change that except for making work even more superfluous than it already is.
- Jensson 4y agoCurrently the life of leaders gets better the more people they can control, since it creates a larger tax base. That means leaders tries to encourage population increase, they want more immigration, encourages people to multiply and sees population reduction as harmful. With AGI that is no longer true, they can just replace most people with computers and automated combat drones while they keep a small number of personal servants to look after them. Currently most jobs either is there to support other humans or can be replaced by a computer, remove the need for humans and all of those jobs just disappear and leaders no longer care about having lots of people around.
- omg_stoppit 4y agoAnd as societies progress, they must either realize why basic necessities like Universal Basic Income exist, or just allow for large swathes of their population to die off.
- ge96 4y ago
- systemvoltage 4y agoWeestern civilization would be dead if it weren't for eccentric people like this. Let them blow $20M, there are worse ways.
- paxys 4y ago$20 million is pretty much nothing when split among a handful of billionaires and the biggest VC firm in the world. Regardless of the project itself it is worth it to spend that money just to have Carmack's name attached to it and buy some future goodwill.
- Ekaros 4y agoNever underestimate the greater fool theory. Specially in current tech landscape. It just needs him to produce some results and you could end up selling company to FAANG or some big fund for profit.
- ggm 4y agoHe'll make it back on small increments with high value. If he can shave 30% LOC on a vision system for small BoM in some context like self driving cars, 10x stake is coming his way. Basically, they could completely fail to advance AGI (and I think this is what will happen btw, like you) and make gigabucks.
- hervature 4y ago2,300 is in this millennium?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jacquesm 4y agoThe year 2300 is definitely in this millennium.
- dmoy 4y agoOnly if you don't count the second dark age of 1200 years that fit between 2093 and 2094
- Ekaros 4y ago20 million doesn't actually sound in anyway stupid investment with name like Carmack involved. Just have the company produce something and then flip it to next idiot...
- TrainedMonkey 4y agoDo you have a rationale for that? I get a feeling progress in both machine learning and understanding biological intelligence is fairly rapid and has been accelerating. I believe two primary contributing factors are cheaper compute and vast amount of investment poured into machine learning, see https://venturebeat.com/ai/report-ai-investments-see-largest-year-over-year-growth-in-20-years/ https://venturebeat.com/ai/report-ai-investments-see-largest... Now, the question of whether we are going to have AGI is incredibly broad. So I am going to split it into two smaller ones: - Are we going to have enough compute by year X to implement AGI. Note that we are not talking about super intelligence or singularity here. This AGI might be below human intelligence and incredibly uneconomical to run. - Assuming we have enough compute, will we a way to get AGI working. The compute advancements scale with new Chip Fabs linearly and tech node improvements exponentially. I think it is reasonable for compute to get cheaper and more accessible throughout at least 2030. I expect this because TSMC is starting 3nm node production, Intel is decoupling fabing and chip design (aka TSMC model), and the strategic investments into into chap manufacturing driven by supply chain disruptions. See https://www.tomshardware.com/news/tsmc-initiates-3nm-chips-production-next-month https://www.tomshardware.com/news/tsmc-initiates-3nm-chips-p... How much compute do we need? This is hard to estimate, but amount of human connections in human brain is estimated at 100 trillion, that is 1e14. Current largest model has 530B parameters, that is 5.3e11: https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/using-deepspeed-and-megatron-to-train-megatron-turing-nlg-530b-the-worlds-largest-and-most-powerful-generative-language-model/ https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/using-deepspeed-and-megatr... . That is factor of 500 or 9 doublings off. To get there by 2040 we would need a doubling every 2 years. This is slower that recent progress, but past performance does not predict future results. Still, I believe getting models with 1e14 parameters by 2040 is possible for tech giants. I believe it is likely that a model with 1e14 parameters is sufficient for AGI if we know how structure and train it. Will we know how to structure and train it? I think is mostly driven by investment into the AI field. More money means more people and given the venture beat link above the investment seems to be accelerating. A lot of that investment will be unprofitable, but we are not looking to make a profit - we are looking for breakthroughs and larger model sizes. Self-driving, stock trading, and voice controls are machine learning applications which are currently deployed in the real world. At the very least it is reasonable to expect continuous investment to improve those applications. Based on the above I believe we would need to mess things up royally to not get AGI by 2100. Remember this could be below human and super uneconomical AGI. I am rather optimistic, so my personal prediction is that we have 50% chance to get AGI by 2040 and 5-10% chance of getting there by 2030.